Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Crown Business (March 16, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385528175
ISBN-13: 978-0385528177
Getting Organized in the Google Era: How to Get Stuff out of Your Head, Find It When You Need It, and Get It Done Right - Hardcover (Mar. 16, 2010) by Douglas C Merrill and James A. Martin
Preface
Part One: A Panoramic View of You
Chapter 1 Cocktail Parties & Cap'n Crunch: A Journey Inside Your Brain
Chapter 2 Summer Vacations, Suburbia & Factory Shifts: Overcoming Organizational Challenges in a Disorganized World
Chapter 3 Racecars, Basketball Shorts & Opera: Owning Up to Our Personal Constraints
Chapter 4 Climb That Mountain or Chill in the Barcalounger?: The Importance of Having Clear Goals
Part Two: The New Organization - and How to Achieve It
Chapter 5 Beyond Taylorism & Trapper Keepers: Why Search Matters
Chapter 6 Paris, France, or Paris, Vegas?: How to Master the Art of Search
Chapter 7 Colored Markers & Filters: Making Information Stick
Chapter 8 Day-Timer or Digital?: When, and When Not, to Go Paperless
Chapter 9 Beyond Send & Receive: Turning Your E-mails into a Searchable History That's All About You
Chapter 10 Thanks for Sharing: Why You Should Keep Your Calendar in the Cloud
Chapter 11 A Browser, an Operating System & Some Cool Stickers: Organizing Your Documents and Web Content
Part Three: Overcoming Challenges, Big and Small
Chapter 12 Avoiding Brain Strain: Strategies for Minimizing Distractions and Staying Focused Throughout the Workday
Chapter 13 Checking E-mail from the Beach: How to Integrate Work and Life
Chapter 14 Dealing With the Unexpected
Chapter 15 Putting It All Together
Epilogue: Dude! Just Turn Off Your Brain and Ski
Stuff We Love
Appendix: Song Attributions
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Index
Other Reviews
Getting Organized in the Google Era breaks new ground…guiding you to solutions that honor your unique personality. Smart, non-judgmental and filled with practical advice. - Julie Morgenstern, NY Times bestselling author of Organizing from the Inside Out and Never Check Email in the Morning.
“Douglas Merrill has worked a near-miracle: In short, simple steps, he shows how to become powerful and confident in a world of too much info and too little time. This isn’t just the book I wished I’d written, it’s the book I need to give to people I care about.” - Quentin Hardy, Forbes Magazine.
This book has been a terrific resource for a messy-desked, attention-challenged thinker of random thoughts like me! Thanks to Douglas Merrill, I now use digital tools to find almost everything and my transition from paper to digital is no longer awkward. This is a marvelous book, with tremendous ideas on every page. - Susan Scott, NY Times bestselling author of Fierce Conversations, Achieving Success at Work & in Life – One Conversation at a Time, and Fierce Leadership, A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today.
“Perhaps only Douglas Merrill could take us from Frederick Winslow Taylor to cloud computing to getting organized in one helpful read. This is the book to help you stay ahead of your own avalanche of information so that it's always accessible and useful to you.” - Dave Girouard, President of Enterprise Group, Google, Inc.
About the Book
Whether it's a faulty memory, a tendency to multitask, or difficulty managing our time, every one of us has limitations conspiring to keep us from being organized. But, as organizational guru and former Google CIO Douglas C. Merrill points out, it isn't our fault. Our brains simply aren't designed to deal with the pressures and competing demands on our attention in today's fast-paced, information-saturated, digital world. What's more, he says, many of the ways in which our society is structured are outdated, imposing additional chaos that makes us feel stressed, scattered, and disorganized.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Luckily, we have a myriad of amazing new digital tools and technologies at our fingertips to help us manage the strains on our brains and on our lives; the trick is knowing when and how to use them. This is why Merrill, who helped spearhead Google's effort to "organize the world's information," offers a wealth of tips and strategies for how to use these new tools to become more organized, efficient, and successful than ever.
But if you're looking for traditional, rigid, one-size-fits-all strategies for organization, this isn't the book for you. Instead, Merrill draws on his intimate knowledge of how the brain works to help us develop fresh, innovative, and flexible systems of organization tailored to our individual goals, constraints, and lifestyles.
From how to harness the amazing power of search, to how to get the most out of cloud computing, to techniques for filtering through the enormous avalanche of information that assaults us at every turn, to tips for minimizing distractions and better integrating work and life, Getting Organized in the Google Era is chock-full of practical, invaluable, and often counterintuitive advice for anyone who wants to be more organized and productive–and less stressed--in our 21st-century world.
About the Author
DOUGLAS C. MERRILL, most recently the President of Digital and the COO of New Music for EMI Recorded Music, was the chief information officer at Google until April 2008. Previously, he was a senior vice president at Charles Schwab and Co. and an information scientist at the RAND Corporation. He has a Ph.D in Cognitive Science from Princeton University.
JAMES A MARTIN is a PC World technology blogger, whose articles have appeared in many publications and on web sites including Washingtonpost.com.
Part One: A Panoramic View of You
Chapter 1 Cocktail Parties & Cap'n Crunch: A Journey Inside Your Brain
"Organize your life to minimize brain strain."
* Experiencing the Cocktail Party Effect
"Get stuff out of your head as quickly as possible."
- Albert Einstein's Phone Number
* Why Multitasking Doesn't Work
"Multitasking usually makes you less efficient."
* Moving from Short-Term to Long-Term Memory
* You Ordered Sushi, the Waiter Brought Tempura Chicken
"Use Stories to remember."
- A Story About a Story
* Recreating a Chess Game
* Decisions, Decisions
* Reasons to Stick with Cap'n Crunch
** ENCODE THIS
- Our brain is one of the biggest challenges we face in becoming organized. It is inept at memorizing bits of information, multitasking, and making decisions. But there are ways to get around our brain's limitations.
- Because our brain often works against us, it helps to understand how it functions. That understanding can guide us as we try to improve our organization skills, and it can help us devise systems that let our brains work for, rather than against, us.
- At any given moment, your brain registers a lot more than you're actually aware of. Generally, only the information that's relevant to us makes it into our consciousness.
- After we notice something, it goes into short-term memory. Once it's there, we can decide if it means anything and if we need to do something with it.
- To remember something, you have to move it from short-term to long-term memory. That's called encoding.
- The best way to encode something is to associate a story with it. Stories are much easier to remember than facts.
- To use stories for recall, think about what you want to do with that bit of data before you encode it.
- Avoid wasting brain energy by being selective about what you try to remember.
Chapter 2 Summer Vacations, Suburbia & Factory Shifts: Overcoming Organizational Challenges in a Disorganized World
* Nine to Five: What a Way to Make a Living
- Taylor and the Science of Handling Pig Iron
"Just because something's always been done a certain way doesn't mean it should be."
* Do Your Kids Need Time Off to Pick Corn?
* Your Fast Car Is Stuck in Traffic
* Once Upon a Time, When Knowledge Was Power
"Knowledge is not power. The sharing of knowledge is power."
* The Bell Rang, My Blood Vessels Burst
- The Ringing of the Bell
* It's Not About Working Harder
** ENCODE THIS
- Many of the most established structures and beliefs in our world are all wrong, from the nine-to-five workday to summer breaks from school, to the assumptions we make about the power of knowledge. Each makes organization more difficult.
- Too often, we try to make our lives work within outdated structures, rather than revise the structures to work within our lives. The end result is that, every day, we're doing things wrong, we're taxing our brain and adding stress to our lives, which keeps us from being better organized.
- The good news is, we're not powerless. But in order to thrive, we first must question our structures. We may not be able to change them dramatically. But we can work around them by changing how we react to them and minimizing their impact on us. Some things you can do:
+ Try to anticipate how technology might change your life, instead of ignoring those changes after they're entrenched.
+ Take advantage of affordable, abundant technology (such as fast Internet access and videoconferencing) to work at home, at least part of the time.
+ Talk to your boss about switching your hours to avoid traffic congestions.
+ If you have young kids, organize a summer playgroup for children in your neighborhood, rotating the supervision duties among the parents.
+ Send the kids to summer school (though this is likely to make you wildly unpopular).
+ Consider moving closer to work, school, church, and shopping, to minimize time and resources wasted driving long distances.
+ Don't buy into the knowledge-is-power trap. Share your knowledge with others and invite them to do the same. Everyone does a better job that way.
+ Work with others - preferably people who are different from you - to find manageable solutions to some of the bigger problems in your world.
Chapter 3 Racecars, Basketball Shorts & Opera: Owning Up to Our Personal Constraints
* Assumed Versus Actual
"Organize around actual constraints, not assumed ones."
* A Panoramic View of You
"Be completely honest -but never judgmental- with yourself."
* Can You Control It?
* Knowing When to Ignore a Constraint
Sweet Clarity
* The Constraints of Stress
**ENCODE THIS
- Whether they're physical, psychological, or imposed on us by society, we all have constraints particular to us.
- To be better organized, it's important to fully understand your constraints and challenges: where they come from, whether they're actual or assumed, how they affect you, and what you can realistically do about them.
- There are two broad categories of constraints: assumed constraints that may or may not be real, and actual constraints that are real. It's essential to know the difference, so you don't waste time and energy trying to overcome a constraint that doesn't exist.
- It's hard to know what our actual constraints are because we're really bad at objectively evaluating ourselves and our environments. That's when we need to ask others for help.
- Of the constraints that are real, some are within our control. Others can be mitigated but not entirely overcome. Still others are completely out of our control. The sooner we figure out which those are, the sooner we can stop wasting time on things that aren't going to yield positive results.
- Know when to ignore your constraints. Weigh the constraint against your assets, such as your skills and available resource. Consider what's at stake too. What's the worst that can happen if you ignore the constraint? Whatever you decided, try not to let irrational fear take control. Fear is an emotional constraint that's often best ignored.
- It's important to identify and develop strategies to get around those constraints that flare up in times of stress before the unexpected happens. That way you'll be better prepared if a crisis should strike.
Chapter 4 Climb That Mountain or Chill in the Barcalounger?: The Importance of Having Clear Goals
"Know exactly where you're going -and how you'll get there- before you start the engine."
* Knowing What to Do, What Not to Do
* Being Flexible
"Be flexible about how you achieve your goals."
* Going Blank
* Making Decisions
** ENCODE THIS
- A clearly mapped out goal (and action plan to achieve it) gives context and purpose to everything you do and helps you organize your actions much more effectively.
- When you know your goals, it's easier to know what's important to do and not do, what information you need to keep in your brain, and what information you don't. This makes it easier to be efficient and organized.
- Being specific about your goals is essential. The more specific your goals are, the easier they are to achieve, and the easier your results are to measure.
- It also helps to b e flexible about the outcome of your goals, so you'll be open to finding new ways to achieve them if your first approach fails.
- To determine your specific goals, ask yourself questions like: What is it I really need to achieve, above all else, and why do I need to achieve it? What will happen if I don't do it? What are the actions I have to take to make it happen?
- Once you know your goals and constraints related to an important project or task, set aside some time to clear your mind before getting to work. Then decide whether you should do the task you're considering at all, and whether you need to either delegate and/or ask for help.
- The bigger the plan, the bigger and more numerous your decisions are likely to be. Unfortunately, we're quite bad at making decision. But we can learn to overcome, or at least compensate for, our poor decision-making skills. Some suggestions:
+ Bounce your decisions off someone whose opinion you trust. That person will help you spot any faulty logic or biases at work. Or he or she will reinforce that you've made a good decision.
+ Try the various outcomes of your decisions on for size. "Live" with each decision for a little while, by visualizing its outcome to see how it feels.
+ Do your research. Additional information may help you make your decision. But don't overdo it. Too much information can actually make your decision harder.
+ Make a list of the pros and cons of the possible outcome of your decision. Try to prioritize them in order of importance.
+ Write down your entire arguments in favour of and opposed to the decision you're considering. After a day or two, reread what you've written and challenge your assumptions.
** PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN PART ONE
1. Organize your life to minimize brain strain.
2. Get stuff out of your head as quickly as possible.
3. Multitasking can actually make you less efficient.
4. Use stories to remember.
5. Just because something's always been done a certain way doesn't mean it should be.
6. Knowledge is not power. The sharing of knowledge is power.
7. Organize around actual constraints, not assumed ones.
8. Be completely honest -but never judgmental- with yourself.
9. Know when to ignore your constraints.
10. Know exactly where you're going -and how you'll get there- before you start the engine.
11. Be flexible about how you achieve your goals.
Part Two: The New Organization - and How to Achieve It
Chapter 5 Beyond Taylorism & Trapper Keepers: Why Search Matters
* Why Organization Isn't the Same for Everyone
* Predicting the Future
- What's All This Talk About "the Cloud"?
"Don't file your information; search for it."
** ENCODE THIS
- Organization is not the same for everybody. The long-held notion that the same set of organizing methods would work for everyone doesn't take into account our individual differences, experiences, constraints, and foibles.
- With all the technological advances of the past few years, the old rules of being organized are outdated and don't serve our needs today.
- What we need now is an entirely new approach to being organized that recognizes our differences, takes our constraints and foibles into account, and leverages technology wherever possible. The new organization even gives us the freedom to be a bit disorganized.
- Search is the foundation of the new organization. We don't have to spend time and energy filing and hunting for critical information. All we have to do is search for it.
Chapter 6 Paris, France, or Paris, Vegas?: How to Master the Art of Search
* Crawling the Web
* Getting the Most Relevant Search Results
- Be as descriptive as possible
- Use quotation marks around a phrase
- Search for adjectives
- Excludes what you don't want.
- Get specific with numeric ranges.
- Search a particular site.
- Look for a particular file type.
* Your Search Engine is Also a Calculator
- Currency conversions.
- Measurement conversions.
- Time.
- Weather.
- Maps.
- Flight Status.
- Foreign-language translations.
- Definitions.
- Phone numbers.
- Stock Quotes.
- Shipment status.
- Calculations
- Spell checker
- Movie show times.
* The Small Stuff
* Searching Your Computer
** ENCODE THIS
- Because of search, you no longer have to neatly organize all your information the way you would with physical files, with a place for everything and everything in its place.
- Search is the foundation of the organizational systems we need today. These systems weren't possible even five years ago because we didn't have until recently the digital tools these systems required.
- It's important we learn how to master search because it has become an essential part of our everyday lives.
- The savvier you become at search, the better and faster you can filter out what's not important -so you can focus on what is.
- No two search engines do things exactly the same. That's why you can get varying results using the same term on different search engines.
- There are lots of easy ways to refine Google searches to get the best results. Learning these tricks will save yo time and energy and, most importantly, deliver the information you need.
Chapter 7 Colored Markers & Filters: Making Information Stick
* Your Goals Are Your Guide
"Only keep in your head what truly needs to be there."
* Filtering Out What You Don't Need
"Break big chunks into small ones."
* The Rewards of Repetition
"Dedicate time each week to reviewing key information."
- Helping Your Kids Study
* Where Filtering Falls Down
** ENCODE THIS
- Given the massive amount of information coming at you every day, it's important to keep in your head only what truly needs to be there. The first step toward getting rid of that clutter is filtering.
- To filter, try to decide what your goals are for the information before or as you read it. Skim through the material, whether it's a book, article, blog post, or a string of e-mails. Use your goals to group the information into categories depending on what you need to do with the information: ignore it, store it to come back to later, or encode it into memory. You might also consider grouping the information you want to store or encode into smaller categories based on its context.
- Knowing your goals for information helps you organize it. It also helps you remember it because if you know how you plan to use a piece of information later, you can develop a context or story for the information, which helps with encoding.
- Filtering is more difficult when you don't have goals. But it can be done. Repetition and rereading will usually help you identify goals for the information.
- Repetition, either through writing something down or rereading it, also enhances recall. Dedicate time each week to reviewing information you've collected during that week -meeting notes, e-mail, Web pages you bookmarked, and so on. Reviewing the information again, at a time when you're focused, will help you remember it. When you can easily recall information you need, when you need it, you'll be more organized and successful.
- Break big chunks of information (or actions) into smaller ones, whenever possible. You won't feel so overwhelmed. And it will increase your chances of remembering. Plus, it will allow you to look for patterns and themes so you can organized the chunks in a way that, given your goals, makes the most sense to you.
- Start practicing your own version of filtering as soon as possible. It'll help you be more prepared later, should yo have to deal with an onslaught of information during a crisis.
Chapter 8 Day-Timer or Digital?: When, and When Not, to Go Paperless
* The Uses of Paper
* Organizing Your Home Office
* The Downsides to Paper
* Benefits of the Cloud
* The Importance of Taking Notes
* Whatever Happened to the Paperless Office?
* An Awkard Transition
* Paper's Still Important, But...
Chapter 9 Beyond Send & Receive: Turning Your E-mails into a Searchable History That's All About You
* Gmail: It's All About You
* A Major Innovation
* Let's Talk About Conversations
* Creating Gmail Labels and Filters
* Adding a Plus Sign to Your Gmail Address
* To-Do Lists and Other Gmail Uses
* Managing Your Address Book
* Living with Outlook E-Mail
* Gmail as E-mail Aggregator
* What's Stopping You?
* Organizing Your Passwords
Chapter 10 Thanks for Sharing: Why You Should Keep Your Calendar in the Cloud
* A Calendar to Search and Share
* Organizing To-Dos
* Red = Work, Blue = Fun
* Add Context to Your Calendar
Chapter 11 A Browser, an Operating System & Some Cool Stickers: Organizing Your Documents and Web Content
* Real-Time Collaboration
* Organizing the Ephemeral
* Getting Started with Google Docs
* Engaging My Brain Over the Atlantic
* Think About the Bread Crumbs You'll Leave
Part Three: Overcoming Challenges, Big and Small
Chapter 12 Avoiding Brain Strain: Strategies for Minimizing Distractions and Staying Focused Throughout the Workday
* Why It's Hard to Decide on Dinner
* Strategies for Shifting Contexts
* Other People: Context Shifts You Can't Always Control
* Is This Meeting Really Necessary?
Chapter 13 Checking E-mail from the Beach: How to Integrate Work and Life
* Thinking Differently
* Check E-mail on Vacation?
* Frequent Frying
Chapter 14 Dealing With the Unexpected
* An Unfortunate Series of Misunderstandings
* Fighting the Battle, and Winning
* A Little Help from My Friends
* Too Much Information
* The Capacity for Now
Chapter 15 Putting It All Together
Stuff We Love
* Search Engines
* Desktop Search
* E-Mail
* Other Communication Tools
* Online Backup, Storage, and File Syncing
* To-Do List Managers and Productivity Tools
* Web Browsers and Plug-ins
* RSS Readers
* Sharing Documents in the Cloud
* Calendars
* E-book Readers
* Laptops
* Tools for Organizing Your Health Information
* Mood Music
